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IMAGES 
OLD AND NEW 



THE CONTEMPORARY SERIES 

UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME 



Laodice and Danae Play in Verse 

By Gordon Bottomley 

Images — Old and New Poems 

By Richard Aldington 

The English Tongue and Other Poems 
By Lewis Worthington Smith 

Five Men and Pompey Dramatic Portraits 

By Stephen Vincent Benet 

Horizons Poems 

By Robert Alden Sanborn 

The Tragedy A Fantasy in Verse 

By Gilbert Moyle 



IMAGES 

OLD AND NEW 



BY 

RICHARD ALDINGTON 




Boston 

The Four Seas Company 

1916 



.o°^V, 



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Copyright, ipi6, by 
The Four Seas Company 



m 18 1918 



THE FOUR SEAS PRESS 
BOSTON AND NORWOOD 

:S)CI.A492646 



'^^"0 



CONTENTS 




To A Greek Marble 


9 


Argyria 


lO 


The River 


II 


New Love 


12 


"Beauty, Thou Hast Hurt Me Overmuch" 


i3 


Stele 


14 


October 


15 


Lesbia 


16 


In the Old Garden 


17 


June Rain 


18 


In the Via Sistina 


19 


Choricos 


21 


A Girl 


23 


Images 


24 


Hyella 


26 


The Faun Sees Snow for the First Time 


0*7 


At Mitylene 


28 


Lemures 


29 


Amalfi 


30 


Hermes, Leader gf the Dead 


31 


Summer 


32 


At the British Museum 


33 


Scents 


34 


Night Piece 


35 


Dawn 


36 


At Nights 


37 


Evening 


39 


Church Walk, Kensington 


40 



St. Mary's, Kensington 41 

In the Tube 42 

Cinema Exit 43 

Interlude 44 

A New House 45 

Hampstead Heath 46 

London 47 



NOTE 
The editors and publishers concerned have kindly 
given me perimission to reprint many of the poems in 
this book which appeared originally in Poetry 
(Chicago), The Egoist (London), the New Age (Lon- 
don), Poetry and Drama (London), Greenwich Village 
(New York), Others (New York), The Little Review 
(Chicago), The Poetry Journal (Boston), the first 
Imagist anthology (New York: A. & C. Boni. London: 
Poetry Bookshop), the second Imagist anthology 
(Some Imagist Poets. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin Co. 
London: Constable & Co.) 



IMAGES 
OLD AND NEW 



TO A GREEK MARBLE 

IIoTVta, woTVia, 

White grave goddess, 
Pity my sadness, 

silence of Paros. 

1 am not of these about thy feet, 
These garments and decorum; 
I am thy brother, 

Thy lover of aforetime crying to thee, 
And thou hearest me not. 

I have whispered thee in thy solitudes 

Of our loves in Phrygia, 

The far ecstasy of burning noons 

When the fragile pipes 

Ceased in the cypress shade, 

And the brown fingers of the shepherd 

Moved over slim shoulders; 

And only the cicada sang. 

I have told thee of the hills 

And the lisp of reeds 

And the sun upon thy breasts, 

And thou hearest me not, 
Uorvta, TTOTvia, 

Thou hearest me not. 

[9] 



ARGYRIA 

O you, 

O you most fair, 

Swayer of reeds, whisperer 

Among the flowering rushes. 

You have hidden away your hands 

Beneath the poplar leaves ; 

You have given them to the white waters. 

Swallow-fleet, 

Sea-child cold from waves; 

Slight reed that sang so blithely in the wind ; 

White cloud the white sun kissed into the air 

Pan mourns for you. 

White limbs, white song, 
Pan mourns for you. 



[10] 



THE RIVER 

I 

I have drifted along the river 
Until I moored my boat 
By these crossed trunks. 

Here the mist moves 

Over fragile leaves and rushes, 

Colourless waters and brown fading hills. 

You have come from beneath the trees 
And move within the mist, 
A floating leaf. 

n 

O blue flower of the evening, 
You have touched my face 
With your leaves of silver. 

Love me, for I must depart. 



["] 



NEW LOVE 



She has new leaves 
After her dead flowers, 
Like the little almond tree 
Which the frost hurt. 



[12] 



"BEAUTY, THOU HAST HURT ME 
OVERMUCH" 

The light is a wound to me. 

The soft notes 

Feed upon the wound. 

Where wert thou born 
O thou woe 

That consumest my life? 
Whither comest thou? 

Toothed wind of the seas, 
No man knows thy beginning. 
As a bird with strong claws 
Thou woundest me, 
O beautiful sorrow. 



[i3l 



STELE 

Pan, O Pan, 

The oread weeps in the stony olive-garden 

On the hill side. 

There bloom the fragile 
Blue-purple wind-flowers, 
There the wild fragant narcissus 
Bends by the grey stones. 

But Pan, O Pan, 

The oread weeps in the stony olive-garden ; 
She heeds not the moss-coloured lizards 
And Crocus-yellow butterflies. 

For her reed pipe 

That was the crying of the wind, 

Her pipe that was the singing 

Wind of the mountain. 

Her pipe is broken. 

Pan, O Pan, 

As you rush from the peaks 

With the wood-girls and flower-girls 

And the shouting fauns, 

Unawares you have broken her little reed 

With your stamping hoofs. 

And she weeps in the olive -garden. 

[14] 



OCTOBER 

The beech-leaves are silver 
For lack of the tree's blood ; 
At your kiss my lips 
Became like the silver beech-leaves. 



[IS] 



LESBIA 

Grow weary if you will, let me be sad. 

Use no more speech now; 

Let the silence spread gold hair above us, 

Fold on delicate fold. 

Use no more speech; 

You had the ivory of my life to carve 

And Picus of Mirandola is dead ; 
And all the gods they dreamed and fabled of, 
Hermes and Thoth and Qirist are rotten now, 
Rotten and dank . . . 

And through it all I see your pale Greek face ; 

Tenderness 

Makes me as eager as a little child to love you, 

You morsel left half cold on Caesar's plate. 



i6] 



IN THE OLD GARDEN 

[ have sat here happy in the gardens, 

Watching the still pool and the reeds 

\nd the dark clouds 

kVhich the wind of the upper air 

Fore like the green leafy boughs 

3f the divers-hued trees of late summer; 

But though I greatly delight 

[n these and the water-lilies, 

rhat which sets me nighest to weeping 

's the rose and white colour of the smooth flag-stones, 

\nd the pale yellow grasses 

Vmong them. 



[17] 



JUNE RAIN 

Hot, a griffin's mouth of flame, 

The sun rasped with his golden tongue 

The city streets, till men and walls shrivelled ; 

The dusty air stagnated. 

At the third noon a wind rippled, 
A wide sea silently breaking; 
A thick veil of rain-drops 
Hid the sun and the hard blue. 

A grey garment of rain. 
Cold as hoar frost in April, 
Enwrapped us. 



[i8] 



IN THE VIA SISTINA 

O daughter of Isis, 

Thou standest beside the wet highway 

Of this decayed Rome, 

A manifest harlot. 

Straight and slim art thou 

As a marble phallus; 

Thy face is the face of Isis 

Carven 

As she is carven in basalt. 

And my heart stops with awe 

At the presence of gods, 

For there beside thee on the stall of images 

Is the head of Osiris 

Thy lord. 



U9] 



CHORICOS 

The ancient songs 

Pass deathward mournfully. 

Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths, 

Regretful eyes, and drooping breasts and wings — 

Symbols of ancient songs, 

Mournfully passing 

Down to the great white surges, 

Watched of none 

Save the frail sea-birds 

And the lithe pale girls. 

Daughters of Okeanos. 

And the songs pass. From the green land 

Which lies upon the waves as a leaf 

On the flowers of hyacinth ; 

And they pass from the waters, 

The manifold winds and the dim moon, 

And they come, 

Silently winging through soft Kimmerian dusk. 

To the quiet level lands 

That she keeps for us all. 

That she wrought for us all for sleep 

In the silver days of the earth's dawning — 

Proserpina, daughter of Zeus. 

And we turn from the Kyprian's breasts, 
And we turn from thee. 



20 



Phoibos ApoUon, 

And we turn from the music of old, 

And the hills that we loved and the meads, 

And we turn from the fiery day, 

And the lips that were over-sweet ; 

For silently 

Brushing the fields with red-shod feet. 

With purple robe 

Searing the grass as with a sudden flame, 

Death, 

Thou hast come upon us. 

And of all the ancient songs 

Passing to the swallow-blue halls 

By the dark streams of Persephone, 

This only remains — 

That in the end we turn to thee, 

Death, 

We turn to thee, singing 

One last song. 

O Death, 

Thou art an healing wind 

That blowest over white flowers 

A-tremble with dew ; 

Thou art a wind flowing 

Over far leagues of lonely sea; 

Thou art the dusk and the fragrance ; 

Thou art the lips of love mournfully smiling; 

Thou art the sad peace of one 

[21] 



Satiate with old desires ; 

Thou art the silence of beauty, 

And we look no more for the morning 

We yearn no more for the sun 

Since with thy white hands, 

Death, 

Thou crownest us with the pallid chaplets, 

The slim colourless poppies 

Which in thy garden alone 

Softly thou gatherest. 

And silently; 

And with slow feet approaching; 

And with bowed head and unlit eyes. 

We kneel before thee: 

And thou, leaning toward us, 

Caressingly layest upon us 

Flowers from thy thin cold hands, 

And, smiling as a chaste woman 

Knowing love in her heart. 

Thou seelest our eyes 

And the illimitable quietude 

Comes gently upon us. 



[22] 



A GIRL 

You were that clear Sicilian fluting 
That pains our thought even now. 

You were the notes 
Of cold fantastic grief 
Some few found beautiful. 



[23] 



IMAGES 



I 



Like a gondola of green scented fruits 
Drifting along the dank canals of Venice, 
You, O exquisite one, 
Have entered into my desolate city. 

II 

The blue smoke leaps 
Xike swirling clouds of birds vanishing. 
So my love leaps forth toward you, 
Vanishes and is renewed. 

Ill 

A rose-yellow moon in a pale sky 
When the sunset is faint vermilion 
In the mist among the tree-boughs 
Art thou to me, my beloved. 

IV 

A young beech tree on the edge of the forest 

Stands still in the evening, 

Yet shudders through all its leaves in the light air 

And seems to fear the stars — 

So are you still and so tremble. 



[24] 



The red deer are high on the mountain, 
They are beyond the last pine-trees. 
And my desires have run with them. 

VI 

The flower which the wind has shaken 
Is soon filled again with rain ; 
So does my heart fill slowly with tears, 
O Foam-Driver, Wind-of -the- Vineyards, 
Until you return. 



[25] 



HYELLA 

(From "Aeon," written in Latin in the sixteenth 
century by the Italian, Giovanni-Battista Amalteo.) 

See the maiden, the maiden is dying ; 

And now the glory withers from her rose-red face. 

As a dark blue hyacinth flower 

In a secret valley, 

Fed by the earth our mother, 

Received in her breast, 

Drawn up by her with dew and happy winds— 

If once the heat of heaven or bitter Auster 

Fall upon it, straightway, 

Spoiled of the joyful pride of beauty, 

It droops and dies upon the parched grasses. 

Unwonted griefs are in the meadows 

And the hay-swathes are rotting ; 

Christ-thorns grow for violets and the bright lilies 

Wither on the drooping stem; 

No berries colour the lush river-bank ; 

Neither grass nor leaf springs in meadow and wood. 



[26] 



THE FAUN SEES SNOW FOR THE 
FIRST TIME 

Zeus, 

Brazen-thunder-hurler, 

Cloud- whirler, son-of-Kronos, 

Send vengeance on these Oreads 

Who strew 

White frozen flecks of mist and cloud 

Over the brown trees and the tufted grass 

Of the meadows, where the stream 

Runs black through shining banks 

Of bluish white. 

Zeus, 

Are the halls of heaven broken up 
That you flake down upon me 
Feather-strips of marble ? 

Dis and Styx ! 

When I stamp my hoof 

The frozen-cloud-specks jam into the cleft 

So that I reel upon two slippery points 



Fool, to stand here cursing 
When I might be running! 



[27] 



AT MITYLENE 

O Artemis, 

Will you not leave the dark fastness 

And set your steel-white foot upon the foam, 

And come across the rustling sand 

Setting it a-drift with the wind of your raiment. 

For these women have laid out a purple cloth, 

And they have builded you an altar 

Of white shells for the honey. 

They have taken the sea grass for garlands 

And cleansed their lips with the sea. 

O Artemis, 

Girdle the gold about you, 
Set the silver upon your hair 
And remember us — 

We, who have grown weary even of music, 
We, who would scream behind the wild dogs of 
Scythia. 



[28] 



LEMURES 

In Nineveh 

And beyond Nineveh 

In the dusk 

They were afraid. 

In Thebes of Egypt 

In the dusk 

They chanted of them to the dead. 

Jn my Lesbos and Achaia 
Where the God dwelt 
We knew them. 

Now men say "They are not"; 

But in the dusk 

Ere the white sun comes — 

A gay child that bears a white candle, 

I am afraid of their rustling, 

Of their terrible silence, 

The menace of their secrecy. 



[29] 



AMALFI 

We will come down to you, 

O very deep sea, 

And drift upon your pale green waves 

Like scattered petals. 

We will come down to you from the hills. 

From the scented lemon-groves. 

From the hot sun. 

We will come down, 

O Thalassa, 

And drift upon 

Your pale green waves 

Like petals. 



[30] 



HERMES, LEADER OF THE DEAD 

We, who loved thy lyre, 

Yet knew the end of all songs 

A lamentation and a mourning; 

We, who loved Eos — 

That maiden whiter than Narcissus — 

And loved the midday heat, the sea-winds 

Rustling across the vineyards ; 

Now in the twilight 

Hold forth trembling hands 

To thee, Hermes, 

Leader of the Dead. 

Bear us upon thy winged flight 

Down the dark blue ways unto Orcus ; 

Make us stabile 

With thy imperishable hands, 

For our feet stumble, and age 

Loosens our knees; 

Our wearied eyes 

Yearn for the heavy bowed gold blossoms 

Beneath the very grey sky 

Of Persephone. 



[31] 



SUMMER 

A butterfly, 
Black and scarlet, 
Spotted with white. 
Fans its wings 
Over a privet flower. 

A thousand crimson foxgloves. 
Tall bloody pikes. 

Stand motionless in the gravel quarry ; 
The wind runs over them. 

A rose film over a pale sky 
Fantastically cut by dark chimneys ; 
Candles winking in the windows 
Across an old city-garden. 



[32] 



I AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM 

I turn the page and read: 

"I dream of silent verses where the rhyme 

Glides noiseless as an oar." 

The heavy musty air, the black desks, 

The bent heads and the rustling noises 

In the great dome 

Vanish .... 

And 

The sun hangs in the cobalt-blue sky. 

The boat drifts over the lake shallows, 

The fishes skim like umber shades through the 

undulating weeds, 
The oleanders drop their rosy petals on the lawns, 
And the swallows dive and swirl and whistle 
About the cleft battlements of Can Grande's castle . . . 



I33] 



SCENTS 

(White Jonquils) 

Old cloisters where a hollow fountain drips 
And the brown church walls 
Are soft with winter sun. 

And the moist garden mould in March 
After the wind. 

(Yellow Jonquils) 

The moon 

Low down the hills Sorrento sees about her- 

The orange orchards sweet in May. 

Again the soft wet earth 

In English gardens 

When the rain and wind have passed. 



[34] 



NIGHT PIECE 

I lie awake and listen. 

The water drips musically in the large zinc tank; the 
little watch beside me ticks away the seconds of my 
life; at long intervals the bell of St. Mary Abbot's 
growls out huskily the quarters : ding ding, dang, dong ! 

Silence. The water drips slower and more musically; 
the watch ticks more gently; the window-curtain 
rustles a little in the wind and a faint confused glow of 
moonlight slips into the room. 

Silence. I rise and draw the curtain. The white misty 
moonlight chequers the houses into blocks and lines 
and angles of watery silverish white and intense black 
shadows. There is no movement, no sound in the city. 

No sound ? A train whistle blows very faint and shrill 
and clear and far away — clearer than bugles and as 
shrill as a night bird. A train is running out from 
Maiylebone or Victoria . . . 

Very faint and shrill and far away the whistle sounds 
— more like a wild bird than ever. And all my unsatis- 
fied desires and empty wishes and vague yearnings are 
set aching by the thin tremulous whistle — the post-horn 
of the coach of Romance. 



[35] 



DAWN 

It is night ; and silent. 

The mist is still beside the frozen dykes ; it lies on the 
stiff grass, about the poplar trunks. The last star goes 
out. 

The gulls are coming up from the sea, crying, and 
drifting across like pieces of mist, like fragments of 
white cloth. They turn their heads and peer as they 
pass. The sky low down glows deep purple. 

The plovers swirl and dart over the ploughed field be- 
yond; their screams are sorrowful and sharp. The 
purple drifts up the pale sky and grows redder. The 
mist stirs. 

The brass on the harness of the plough-horses jingles 
as they come into the field. The birds rise in scattered 
knots. The mist trembles, grows thinner, rises. The 
red and gold sky shines dully on the ice. 

The men shout across the thawing clods ; the ploughs 
creak; the horses steam in the cold; the plovers anH 
.gulls have gone ; the sparrows twitter. 

The sky is gold and blue, very faint and damp. 

It is day. 



[36] 



AT NIGHTS 

At nights I sit here, 

Shading my eyes, shutting them if you glance up, 

Pretending to doze. 

And watching you. 

Thinking. . . 

I think of when I first saw the beauty of things — 

God knows I was poor enough and sad enough 

And humiliated enough — 

But not all the slights and the poorness and the worry 

Could hide away the green of the poplar leaves, 

The ripples and light of the little stream, 

The patterns of the ducks* feathers — 

Like a Japanese print — 

The dawns I saw in the winter 

When I went shooting. 

The summer walks and the winter walks, 

The hot days with the cows coming down to the water, 

The flowers, 

Buttercups, meadowsweet, hog's parsley, 

And the larks singing in the morning 

And the thrushes singing at evening 

When I went out into the fields, muttering poetry. . . 

I looked at the world as God did 
When first He made it. 
I saw that it was good. 



[37] 



And now at nights, 

Now that everything has gone right somehow, 

And I have friends and books 

And no more bitterness, 

I sit here, shading my eyes, 

Peeping at you, watching you. 

Thinking. 



[38] 



EVENING 

The chimneys, rank on rank, 

Cut the clear sky; 

The moon, 

With a rag of gauze about her loins 

Poses among them, an awkward Venus- 

And here am I looking wantonly at her 
Over the kitchen sink. 



[39] 



CHURCH WALK, KENSINGTON 

(Sunday Morning) 

The cripples are going to church. 
Their crutches beat upon the stones, 
And they have clumsy iron boots. 

Their clothes are black, their faces peaked and mean ; 
Their legs are withered 
Like dried bean pods. 

Their eyes are as stupid as frogs*. 

And the god, September, 
Has paused for a moment here 
Garlanded with crimson leaves. 
He held a branch of fruited oak. 
He smiled like Hermes the beautiful 
Cut in marble. 



[40] 



ST. MARY'S, KENSINGTON 

The orange plane-leaves 

Rest gently on the cracked grey slabs 

In the city churchyard. 

O pitiful dead, 

There is not one of those who pass by 

To remember you. 

But the trees do not forget ; 
Their severed tresses 
Are laid sadly above you. 



[41] 



IN THE TUBE 

The electric car jerks; 

I stumble on the slats of the floor, 

Fall into a leather seat 

And look up. 

A row of advertisements, 

A row of windows, 

Set in brown woodwork pitted with brass nails, 

A row of hard faces, 

Immobile, 

In the swaying train, 

Rush across the flickering background of fluted dingy- 
tunnel ; 

A row of eyes. 

Eyes of greed, of pitiful blankness, of plethoric com- 
placency, 

Immobile, 

Gaze, stare at one point. 

At my eyes. 

Antagonism, 

Disgust, 

Immediate antipathy. 

Cut my brain, as a dry sharp reed 

Cuts a finger. 

I surprise the same thought 
In the brasslike eyes : 

'What right have you to live." 

[42] 



CINEMA EXIT 

After the click and whirr 

Of the glimmering pictures, 

The dry feeling in the eyes 

As the sight follows the electric flickerings, 

The banal sentimentality of the films, 

The hushed concentration of the people, 

The tinkling piano — 

Suddenly, 

A vast avalanch of greenish yellow light 

Pours over the threshold; 

White globes darting vertical rays spot the sombre 

buildings ; 
The violent gloom of the night 
Battles with the radiance; 
Swift figures, legs, skirts, white cheeks, hats 
Flicker in oblique rays of dark and light. 

Millions of human vermin 

Swarm sweating 

Along the night-arched cavernous roads. 

(Happily rapid chemical processes 
Will disintegrate them all.) 



[43] 



INTERLUDE 

Blow your tin squeals 
On your reedy whistle. 

How they come 

dancing, 
White girls, 

lithe girls, 
In linked dance 
From Attica. 
Gay girls dancing 

in the frozen street, 
Hair streaming, and white raiment 
Flying, 

Red lips that first were 
Red in Ephesus. 

Gone! 

You ? Red-nose, piping by the Red Lion, 

You I 

Did you bring them ? 

Here, take my pennies, 
Mon semhlahle, mon frere! 



[44] 



A NEW HOUSE 

Inside, 

A smell of mortar, 

Odours of plaster, sawn wood, damp, 

Hang in the hollow cold rooms 

And taint the breath in one's nostrils. 

Outside, 

Grey dirty scaffoldings tied with ropes, 

Red walls crusted with scum. 

Rise from the trampled soil 

Among felled trees and naked flowers. 

There is a silence, a truce; 
The old earth-gods retreat 
Sullen, beaten and disconsolate; 
London has beaten them, 
Swallowed, engulfed their territory. 
Crushing their flowers into mud. 



[45] 



HAMPSTEAD HEATH 

(Easter Monday, 1915) 

Dark clouds, torn into gaps of livid sky, 

Pierced through 

By a swift searchlight, a long white dagger. 

The black murmuring crowd 
Flows, eddies, stops, flows on 
Between the lights 
And the banks of noisy booths. 



[46J 



LONDON 
(May 1915) 

Glittering leaves 

Dance in a squall; 

Behind them bleak immoveable clouds. 

A church spire 

Holds up a little brass cock 

To peck at the blue wheat-fields. 

Roofs, conical spires, tapering chimneys. 
Livid with sunlight, lace the horizon. 

A pear-tree, a broken white pyramid 
In a dingy garden, troubles me 
With ecstasy. 

At night, the moon, a pregnant woman, 
Walks cautiously over the slippery heavens. 

And I am tormented, 

Obessed, 

Among all this beauty, 

With a vision of ruins, 

Of walls crumbling into clay. 



[47] 



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